Global Survey of Academic Freedom Issues in 2015 [Post 8 of a Series]
Australia—Federal Funding for the Copenhagen Consensus Centre at Flinders University In October, Simon Birmingham, the education minister in the new government of Malcolm Turnbull, announced that it would uphold the decision by Christopher Pyne, the education minister under former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, to withdraw “funding offered to Bjørn Lomborg for the creation of…
Sheryl Sandberg’s Commencement Address at UC Berkeley
Sheryl Sandberg’s commencement address at UC Berkeley has attracted considerable media attention because it includes some extended personal reflections on the sudden loss of her husband. Although there is very clearly a tabloid aspect to the media interest in Sandberg’s remarks, the personal elements of her observations actually do give considerable depth to what…
Murder Is Our Peculiar Pastime: Fifty Notable American Crime Novels: 19-20
BY MARTIN KICH Ellroy, James. L.A. Confidential. New York: Mysterious, 1990. A strong case can be made that in the last quarter of the 20th century, James Ellroy has stylistically influenced the American mystery-detective novel more than any other novelist of the period. After writing seven other crimes novels in six years, Ellroy focused his…
More Evidence of the Value of a Liberal Arts Education
Almost 40 Faculty and 70 Staff Eliminated at NKU
Writing for the Cincinnati Inquirer, Kate Murphy reports that Northern Kentucky University will eliminate “more than 100 faculty and staff positions” to cover an $8 million budget shortfall. The announcement came on the heels of a ruling by Franklin County Circuit Judge Thomas Wingate that “Gov. Matt Bevin can cut the budgets of public colleges and…
Global Survey of Academic Freedom Issues in 2015 [Post 7 of a Series]
Australia—Nikolic, Powell, and Price In March 2015, Michael Powell, a lecturer at the University of Tasmania, wrote an opinion piece published in the Launceston Examiner pointing out that the budget reductions being proposed by the Liberal government would have a devastating impact on higher education across Australia. The Liberal Whip happened to be Alexander…
Debating the Value of Tenure
Tenure is under fire both economically and politically—as the percentage of faculty who are tenured or on tenure tracks declines and as state governments undermine the legal standing of the concept, as they have in Wisconsin. So we all need to be better prepared to defend the concept, whether in professional or personal conversations or…
UNC Pres. Spellings’ Letter to U.S. Justice Dept.
What follows is the text of a letter sent by Margaret Spellings, president of the University of North Carolina, to the Justice Department, making the case that the university–and, by extension all public colleges and universities in the state–have been placed in a very difficult situation by the Department of Justice’s suit on transgender rights and the…
Minimizing the Reach of Government
Like others who post to this blog, I am generally not in favor of academic boycotts. But I don’t have the same reservations about economic boycotts. But, ultimately, my different attitudes toward the two types of boycotts may amount to a distinction without a real difference because I would not try to eliminate anyone else’s…